Friday, April 24, 2009

Mad Friday Maps Fun

Mad's 500th IssueWired have managed to get a sneak peak at next week's 500th edition of Mad magazine, which contains a close examination of the Google Maps satellite image of the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Under close examination it appears the satellite imagery reveals many of Google's secrets, like the room that houses the Chinese censors responsible for erasing all references to Tibet on the internet and the office where all your porn searches are filed ready to be leaked should you ever decide to run for office.

TeamNames.netTeamNames.net is a sports stadium/venue search tool built on Google Maps. Using the map it is possible to browse the satellite images of sports stadiums around the world. Once at a stadium view it is possible to get directions or to view nearby stadiums.

Currently the map shows venues from a number of sports leagues, including, NBA, MLB, NFL, MLS, NHL, EPL, etc. New teams and sports are being added each week.

Betsy has a great turorial on her personal blog that explains how map developers can use Slimbox to create a similar effect on their own maps. To prove the tutorial works, here are a couple of maps created by users following Betsy's excellent tutorial,

Save and Share Directions With My MapsGoogle Maps has added a new option to driving directions that lets you save your finished directions as a Google My Map. This means that now it is even easier to share your driving directions with friends.

There is also a new tool in driving directions called 'Draw a line along roads'. With this tool when you drag a line it should snap automatically to follow the line of the roads on the map.